Merchant's True Story
by Goldfield
Summary: An interesting theory about the Merchant from Resident Evil 4.


Merchant's True Story

"A Resident Evil tale"

_Welcome!_

_You, the stranger reading this, probably think that I want to offer you some kind of weapon for a couple of pesetas, or give nice prizes as a reward for good scores on the shooting range._

_But you're wrong._

_I'm here today, stranger, to tell you the story of my life._

_Many people ask things about me. They want to know who I am, why I don't speak Spanish, if I'm human or a "ganado"..._

_Well, it's time to meet the answers!_

_Everything started six years ago__... In a town called Raccoon City..._

_I used to be a local shop owner. I had a gun store. Weapons have always been a great love to me. I took care of business with the help of my brother Joe, and we never ran out of money. Actually, after those strange murder cases took place at Arklay Mountains__, the townspeople started buying lots of guns to protect themselves from the supposed "cannibal killers"._

_I had a great friend at that time, Barry Bu__rton, a member of S.T.A.R.S., a special elite force working with Raccoon Police Department. He was, like me, a weapon enthusiast. We used to go fish together at a neighbor town. Everything was just fine, until Barry's team was sent to the mountains to investigate the mentioned bizarre crimes…_

_Back from the mission, the S.T.A.R.S. members told they had to fight terrible monsters resulted from mutations caused by a virus called "T", created by Umbrella Inc., a pharmaceutical company that __controlled the entire Raccoon City._

_Lack of proof, __Barry and his teammates were thought to be crazy and Raccoon's S.T.A.R.S. unit was deactivated. However, good part of the citizens, although without entirely believe the officers, became fearful anyway, cause my shop sales increased. The case was apparently closed, until the tragic September came…_

_Raccoon's hospitals were crowded. __People began to suffer from an unknown disease that caused strong headaches and skin infections. And, suddenly, my sales grew 300. People bought shotguns, machine guns and even grenades, trying to defend themselves from an evil that I didn't know until that moment. Due to the great number of costumers, I started to stay on the store twenty-four hours a day, without switching on the TV to watch the news. I just had in mind that an illness was spreading trough Raccoon and the citizens were buying guns like hell… Nothing more…_

_Until "they" came into scene…_

_Ugly, bad-__smelling and thirsty of blood. Yes, the zombies, the famous monsters from the George Romero's films. I later discovered that they were the people infected by the mysterious plague. Chaos took control of the streets. The police, assisted by Umbrella's soldiers, unsuccessful tried to contain the undead waves. Desperate, I picked up a shotgun and went to the alleys looking for my brother. I was hoping that he'd left the city in time, alive…_

_But I haven't found him. __Back to the shop, I discovered that it was been robbed. I armed myself with what was left at the broken shelves and barricaded behind the counter, waiting an improbable rescue. I stayed there for hours, days, a truly eternity…_

_Until something opened the front door…_

_Freeze! – I shouted, pointing the shotgun and ready to blown the head of the supposed zombie. – Who are you? What are you doing here?_

_Don't shoot, I'm human! – the guy screamed._

_I put the gun down, looking to the mysterious visitor. __It was a young man, probably twenty years old, wearing a cop uniform. He seemed to be really scared. Like me, he was another survivor in the middle of the nightmare…_

_Oh, sorry about that, officer! – I apologized, walking in his direction. – I thought you were one of them!_

_I didn't ask his name. He was just a stranger to me._

_What's going on in this town? – he asked._

_Hold on! – I said, locking the door behind him._

_I answered when finished the task:_

_I don't have a clue! By the time we've noticed something was wrong, the entire city was infested with zombies!_

_Then I started thinking about everything happening in Raccoon City, and got close to the window in the front of the store__. My great mistake. I noticed that the stranger was searching for ammo in the counter and the shelves, but didn't care. Everything was already lost for me. And that became even truer when I heard the sound of glass being broken…_

_Four zombies had destroyed the window, jumping over me before I could react using the shotgun. __I screamed in a terrible tone while the hungry mouths of the creatures torn my body apart, causing my warm blood to spill over the store's floor. The pain was hideous. The last thing I heard before apparently losing life was the back door being closed. The stranger had run away. Anyway, there wasn't any chance for me to be saved from that situation. I stopped screaming and the undead continued their dinner, until everything turned black…_

_I woke up confused in a hospital bed. Joe was by my side, alive. __I asked him how I came to that place. He just said that I had born again. It didn't take a long time for me to understand those words._

_Joe had been secretly working for Umbrella. Security Division. The S.T.A.R.S.'s accusations were true __indeed and the company was really producing biological weapons. I discovered that Raccoon City was destroyed by a nuclear missile two months before (the time I had been unconscious) due to the T-Virus leak, transforming all citizens into zombies. The day before the destruction, my brother, with a team from U.B.C.S. (Umbrella's special squad composed of mercenaries), found me dead inside the store. Hardly accepting my sad destiny, Joe demanded an action from Umbrella about it, or he would reveal their crimes to the world. And, incredible enough, they satisfied his wish…_

_They picked up my body and sent it to a lab in Europe, where a__n experimental virus was injected in my veins. My cells then came back to life. Trough transplants of skin and organs, my body was "fixed", allowing me to have a normal life just like in Raccoon before the outbreak. However, the price was high…_

_I remember getting really scared when first staring my image at a mirror after being brought back to life. __My entire body was covered with terrible scars and my skin had a dead aspect. In the top of that, my eyes now had a sinister red shine…_

_I became an aberration. __Because of that, I began to use a coat that let only my face visible. At least I was still alive. A nice apartment in New York became my new home, and I lived there for quite some time, always being visited by my brother. After Umbrella's fall, he went working on a German weapon factory._

_And, as always, something happened to disturb my peace…_

_I discovered that the people from an isolated village in Spain __was acting in a strange way, apparently affected by some sort of parasite. And a mysterious cult, called "Los Illuminados", planned to use the situation for their occult objectives. To top it off, The daughter of the U.S. President was recently kidnapped, and spotted in the area._

_I feared that an incident like the one in Raccoon was about to take place again. I feared that innocent people were in d__anger of feeling the same pain as I in the past. Because of those thoughts, I secretly traveled to the Spanish village to discover what was really going on. I took with me my old weapon collection, saved by my brother from Raccoon City's destruction…_

_And something very curious happened. I met again the same stranger that entered my shop moments before my death in Raccoon. __The same cop, but now older and working for the Secret Service. He was looking for the President's daughter. I decided to help him, selling the firearms from my collection for pesetas, the local currency. Why not give them for free? Well, for a collector, it's hard to give a weapon without receive anything on its place, and, in some way, the price is a late punishment for him hadn't trying to save my life back in Raccoon…_

_Well, stranger. My name is Robert Kendo, now known as The Merchant. __A ghost from the past of many that now offers rare items on sale._

_Don't have any pesetas?_

_Come back later!_

Written by Luiz Fabrício de Oliveira Mendes, "Goldfield".


End file.
